Guns and Butter Blog

Link to the original Seattle Times column here (reg. required).

Seattle's charms can't hold the young and the restless

By James J. Na

Special to The Times

MY wife's grandfather, who belongs to the "Greatest Generation," was born in Iowa. He survived the Depression, fought in Europe during World War II, raised a family and worked his way up from a paper carrier to retire as a senior executive at a major regional newspaper. He still lives in Iowa, only a drive away from where he began long ago.

In contrast, his granddaughter and I have lived in four different states in the 11 years since we met, all in different corners of the country. We have been in Seattle for only four years, and we are moving again.

My wife and I are not unique in this regard. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, those in the 25- to 39-year-old group are "highly mobile" and account for a third of those who move within five years. Those with college degrees are also more nomadic than those without.

Seattle has a mild climate, beautiful nature and civil residents, a rare combination for a major urban area for those who have experienced blighted East Coast cities and decaying Rust Belt towns. Seattle is high on fashionable ethnic restaurants and other urban attractions and low on violent crime and grimy ghettos.

Naturally, Seattle attracts the young and educated. The Census Bureau data show that the Greater Seattle area is in the top 10 among metro urban areas in attracting such people. Seattle's popularity is corroborated by a personal anecdote — our mover is completely booked for relocations to Seattle, but is wide open for relocations away from it.

So why would we move? To paraphrase Thomas Frank, what's the matter with Seattle?

First, there is education. Oddly for a prosperous area, Seattle has underperforming schools. Even private schools are hardly first-class. In East Asia and the East Coast where I grew up, it is common to find people driving beat-up cars, but sending children to top-notch private and public magnet schools. Seattle's traffic is awash in luxury cars, yet area schools lag in quality.

Then there is the surprising insularity of Seattleites. Despite the image as a vibrant, multiethnic port city and an air of cultural sophistication, Seattleites are remarkably blasé about the world outside their "perfect" bubble. I have heard authoritative declarations, often from those who have not lived elsewhere, that Seattle is the best place to live in the world.

In Iowa, I was often asked whether I was adopted. In Seattle, too many people asked whether I emigrated from "North Korea or South Korea." Seattle may be a world-class city, but it is hardly a worldly city.

Finally, there is politics. Seattle is alienating for conservatives. Of course, that's natural for a city with an overwhelming majority of liberal Democrats. But my concern is for something more than simple partisan discontent.

Many of today's urban centers popular with the coveted young, educated population — such as Austin, Texas, Fairfax, Va., and Tucson, Ariz. — are "blue" cities in "red" states, and thus subject to the purple phenomenon. There is more clash of ideas, more debate. Their suburbs offer "red" stability and respect for private property within an easy reach of eclectic "blue" urban lifestyles.

This political — and policy — competitiveness is important, because incumbents in one-party-dominated areas, whether Republican or Democrat, invariably develop an unhealthy sense of power and collusive relationships with other institutional players. They become less attuned to ordinary citizens. This is a recipe for incompetence and corruption.

Seattle was once subject to the purple phenomenon, too, but the bungled 2004 election and the monorail mess offer a taste of what can happen in a political monopoly. Republicans have long been uncompetitive in the city, of course, but now the political muscle of the city and the surrounding county is such that the state is increasingly less purple, less able to balance Seattle.

There are real costs to a political monopoly. The area is losing the edge in attracting new businesses and jobs. Incumbents who are safe are less reluctant to levy new taxes. There are indeed plans for more taxes, and a state income tax may not be far away. Yet, there is no sight of tort reform or medical-malpractice-liability reform (even California has one). No wonder the area is bleeding doctors with high-risk specialties.

Americans are no longer bound to their families and the land like my wife's grandfather was. With the proliferation of e-mail (yes, grandpa is on the Internet), low-cost airline tickets (making it inexpensive to visit family) and a bewildering array of new concept housing developments (that offer a great lifestyle, not just a job), city councils are finding that smug self-satisfaction as "the best place to live" based on past reputations is no longer enough to attract an educated and tax-generating, but fickle population.

Seattle has had a charmed life. Surely, that will not end abruptly. But Seattle's charms will not continue forever without careful, competitive management — a difficult task in a political monopoly.

In case anyone is wondering why there has not been a post in a few days, I am en route to Northern Virginia. So far I passed through Washington, Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota.

I am sure I will have much more to say once I arrive and set up in NoVA, but for now all I can say is that I am awed by the majesty of the Great West (except for the 50 Cent concert/hotel fiasco in Montana -- more on that once I complete the journey).

I hope all the readers are having a great summer!

And, yes, I miss Seattle's cool summer days already (it's 100 degrees where I am today, and quite humid too). I guess the grass is always greener on the other side!

A while back, I wrote a column called "Underrepresented Minorities." My own proposal for the title was actually "Inconvenient Asians." To repeat:

MAY is Asian Pacific American History Month, designated by President George H.W. Bush. So perhaps it is a fitting occasion to bring up one of my pet peeves:

We are not a biracial nation.

Yet, until recently, "America: black and white" had been a common title in discussions about race relations. Hispanics and Asians were often subsumed into a broad-stroke category of "minorities" along with blacks.

Well, now look at this piece: "American History in Black and White":

To begin: Can we dispense with this false equivalency between the black experience and that of other American ethnic and racial groups? I hate to play "my ordeal was worse than yours," because I think that demeans all our ancestral passages.

Pitts says that he hates to play the who's-the-bigger-victim game. Yet in the next sentence, he writes:

But the fact is, nobody -- with the singular exception of the American Indian -- suffered in this country as blacks did. Our experience here is unique and uniquely telling.

If this is Pitts "hating" playing the victim, I'd hate to see when he actually likes to play one. In today's victim political culture, to be the worst victims is to command the most sympathy and politico-economic "compensation." Frankly, this is nothing but a naked appeal to make African-Americans the most favored people in the US -- because "they suffered the most" (actually even Pitts acknowledges, sideways, that Indians suffered the most, so why doesn't he go on about them?).

It seems that it is Pitts who needs some basic history lesson about the travails of other "American ethnic and racial" groups.

Besides, it is not "groups" that suffer, by and large. Individuals are the ones who bear the costs of injustice and prejudice. Just as many black Americans toiled under slavery, some freed blacks owned slaves and enjoyed master status. Just as many Chinese immigrants were used as "expandables" to die building railroads and gold mines, some Chinese immigrants prospered in the new land.

It is utterly simplistic and misguided to aggregate experiences of all these individual into a single victimist agenda. I personally abhor it as something that arbitrarily divides our nation into groups based on a flawed social-cultural construct.

I am about to leave Seattle and drive across America to Northern Virginia (NoVA). Along the way, I plan to stop by my in-laws for a few days in the Midwest.

Since I will spend sometime with my mother-in-law (MIL), perhaps it's time to mention the deep chasm that separates the two of us.

It's not politics. She was a Nelson Rockefeller Republican who campaigned for George H. W. Bush's in the 1980 primary contest against Ronald Reagan. She despised guns. But I converted her to be an unrepentant right-wing conservative (who still does not care for guns, but now believes in the right of others to own and bear them as they see fit).

The chasm, instead, is about cars.

She thinks that Japanese cars are cheap and Europeans cars are the true luxury vehicles. Wahahaha!

Against my advice (Lexus RX330), she bought a BMW X5 with sports package. The car died within a year. Wahahaha! Schadenfreude, I guess. Previously, she owned a Jeep Grand Cherokee, the SUV that Consumer Reports rated as having the worst reliability of all SUVs it tested. BMW X5 was the second worst.

My father-in-law (FIL) subsequently bought a Lexus RX330 on my advice, and he has been superbly happy with it. Even my MIL conceded it was a very nice SUV... and highly reliable too.

It has been a well-known fact for sometime that major European/German luxury carmakers (Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz) produce high performance luxury cars that are, well, junks. They break easily. They experience electrical and electronic component failures often. They have bad batteries. Their ignition recoils fail catastrophically (bad, bad Audi/VW).

In contrast, Japanese luxury makes like Acura, Infiniti and Lexus generally have stellar reliability ratings and often exquisite interior, not to mention excellent human engineering/ergonomics. In the past, their performance was on the boring side, but that's changed -- and changing -- a lot... quite on par with European cars. Check out cars like the new 2006 Lexus IS350, Lexus GS430 and Acura RL. The sports/performance orientation is clear (even the Lexus 400H, a hybrid with V8-like performance).

It seems there is something of a snob appeal to Europeans cars all out of whack with the value one gets. All of this zoomed through my brain when I read another piece from Todd Crowell:

Back in the 1960s, it took considerable imagination -- not to say a copious amount of sheer faith -- to believe that any Japanese or Asian automobile had the potential to become a classic. Even now some find the notion hard to accept. "The Asian classic car? It's a stretch I must say," says Dave Brownell, one of America's leading authorities on collectable cars.

Guess what? This is what Mr. Brownell says later in the piece:

For example, take the Toyota 2000GT (1965-1970). Only 337 copies of this elegant sports coupe were built, and only 11 Americans ever bought one. Three were exported to the United Kingdom -- two to be used in the James Bond film, You Only Live Twice and the third one bought by Twiggy.

Today collectors jostle to buy these cars, despite a price tag over $100,000.Even Dave Brownell concedes that the Toyota 2000GT has a certain amount of, well, class. "It's very collectable. I wish I had one."

Hah!

I recently ran into a Land Rover parts distributor. He used to race Nissan's in Europe. But he is a big fan of British cars. He told me that "Japanese cars have no soul," the implication being that British cars do.

First of all, cars do not have souls. Only people do. Second, if by "soul," he means the famous gremlins in British cars (my friend Jack once told me that you might as well travel with a fold-out mechanic in the trunk of a British car), he's welcome to it. See, cars are foremost vehicles for transportation. Of course, I acknowledge that they can also be performance or luxury machines. They can also be beautiful works of art.

I am all for performance (I drive a compact car with 215 HP and sports suspension). I am all for beauty (my car is "absolutely red"). But I tend to look at cars like other mechnical objects such as, say, guns. Reliability is always first (fancy looking guns -- or cars -- mean nothing if they won't work). Everything else is of secondary consideration. That is why I do not understand this notion, which my MIL still holds, that European cars are better cars than Japanese cars. It's clear from the Consumer Reports reliability survey (the largest of its kind) that most European cars fail the primary test of a great car, the ability to driven without having to be fixed all the time.

But maybe times are changing, and so will the mindset of American car buyers.

The Bush administration made no new "offer" to the North Korean regime, but North Korea has decided to return to the negotiation table:

"We are able to confirm that we have an agreed upon date with all the parties for resuming six-party talks, the week of July 25," a senior U.S. official traveling with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said.

The confirmation came during a dinner hosted by China for Hill and Kim Kye-gwan, who headed North Korea's delegations to previous six-party talks and is expected to do so again at the next round.

Since a third inconclusive round of talks in Beijing in June last year, Pyongyang had demanded that any new round must have an expanded focus on broader disarmament issues, not just on the North's nuclear programs.

But U.S. officials said Pyongyang had reaffirmed the narrower focus. "It's significant that the purpose is denuclearisation," the senior official said.

Despite all the hysterics and pressure from administration critics for "more aid for North Korea for empty promise in return," Bush and Co. are doing the right thing by holding firm.

We Americans often discuss the cost to ourselves of any failure in negotiations, but we should not forget that North Korea has more to lose in many ways by playing chicken with us, PROVIDED that we negotiate from a principle of strength, not from any sense of desperation and weakness.

Remember the last election? Remember that the Democrats claimed Bush was going to destroy the economy and increase unemployment?

Well, despite the fact that Bush inherited a go-go bubble economy about to burst from Clinton and faced an unprecedented attack on the United States from radical Islamic terrorists, his tax cuts and other anti-recession measures worked -- the US economy now has the lowest level of unemployment since 09/11/2001.

So there!

Britain is reportedly "defiant" (hat tip: RealClearPolitics). I have faith that the British will persevere where Spain failed. Al-Qaida figures supposedly expected three or four terror attacks would force the Spanish government to withdraw from Iraq, but it only took one such attack to rattle the Spaniards. I think Britain, having endured the Blitz and the Irish Republican Army bombing campaign, will not fall so easily.

But even Britain, as a political entity, will have its limits as will we, Americans.

In the aftermath of the London attacks, there are Democrats in the US are engaging in recriminations that the Bush administration hasn't done enough to protect the US rail and subway systems. But the reality is that there is no perfect defense against terrorism. We can certainly increase the costs to the attackers and reduce the chance for a successful attack, but we cannot prevent every single attack. One will always get through.

So defense alone presents a short-term, very imperfect answer. Offense, or pre-emption, is better and more effective in the medium-term, but it is costly in both resources and lives and can engender much political opposition.

Transforming the terrorist-infested regions into viable democracies is the best, long-term solution. In a region that has known nothing but corrupt monarchism and repressive socialist dictatorships, a representative form of government offers the best antidote against religious radicalism in the long-run. But this takes time. A long time. What are we to do in the mean time?

The answer is simple. We have to endure. Of course, that is enormously hard when the popular, public sentiment and emotion sway hither and thither. But if we cannot endure, as the Brits will and as the Israelis have done, we will lose. And if that were to occur, the pain we will feel as a nation and as a society will be far worse than what we feel today from these attacks.

A couple of personal announcements:

1. I will be leaving Seattle next week. My wife and I are relocating to Northern Virginia, near DC. (there will be a Seattle Times op-ed about it shortly). Thanks for all the fish, Seattle, but it's time for greener grass!

I would like to thank all of Guns and Butter's Seattle/Western Washington readers. Please continue to check in with G&B.

2. In the near future, I will also unveil a new pan-East Asian blog, dealing with US-East Asian relations, politics, economics and social-cultural issues (by East Asia, I mean China, Japan, the two Koreas and Taiwan). This will not be on Blogger/Blogspot. Please stay tuned.

By the way, during my planning for the move, I found two very helpful sites, which merit attention:

1. Bankrate.com: Allows users to compare rates from dozens of banks, graphs cutomized interest rate trends and a host of other useful things in obtaining a loan.

2. Movingscam.com: There are many horror stories about moving companies. This site was started by a customer who was "burnt" by a moving scam. It has wealth of information about how to protect oneself; the forum is superb for finding out about local moving companies. I recommend it highly.*

*One quick side story: USAA, which was founded as a member-owned insurance company to serve military personnel and families, is a tremendous company. Its prices are competitive, and what is even better is the service.

Even when USAA does not offer a certain kind of service, it has a list of recommended providers and companies (realtors, car mechanics, etc.). Usually, USAA-referred customers get great service, because USAA will not hesitate to sever relationship with those companies that provide below-par service to its members.

But even USAA does not recommend a moving company. Why, I asked. Answer: no moving company could provide satisfactory service and complaint resolution on a par with those required by USAA! Sad, eh?

Not to be outdone by Spielberg, Showtime is doing a mini-series about a Muslim-American anti-terrorist operative in the War on Terror.

Of course, it's been done before, with pretty good skill and sense of humor, I might add, by Tony Shalhoub in the 1998 Edward Zwick film "The Siege," a highly underrated film in my view.

As one online reviewer wrote about Zwick's film, it was "eerily prescient." Shalhoub was wonderful in the film, almost stealing the show with his great lines and a wonderful sense of humor. Check it out and watch it with the knowledge that it was made long before 9/11.

In any case, I am eager to see what the Showtime mini-series will be like.

I had a chance to see the fireworks by the water in Seattle from a friend's deck with a great view. I suppose it was something of a sight. It was occasionally loud.

I have seen fireworks in NYC. I have seen fireworks from a little country club in Des Moines.

I still don't get it. Why is everyone so excited about fireworks? The lights invariably make me think of tracers of flak guns, lighting up the air. I also don't get smores. I guess it's because I grew up elsewhere during my childhood and did not get to experience fireworks or smores as an American kid.

Oh, well. I love this country all the same.

By the way, July 1st marks my second anniversary as an American. My citizenship ceremony missed the Fourth of July by three days. Awh... That'd been very cool, eh?

NYT:

That night in Malta, Mr. Spielberg quietly began filming the most politically charged project he has yet attempted: the tale of a secret Mossad hit squad ordered to assassinate Palestinian terrorists after the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.

Just when you thought that Spielberg was back to his usual big budget crowd-pleasers, he tackles another ambitious and highly controversial subject.

Indeed, the movie's terrain is so packed with potential land mines that, associates say, Mr. Spielberg has sought counsel from advisers ranging from his own rabbi to the former American diplomat Dennis Ross, who in turn has alerted Israeli government officials to the film's thrust.

So far so good. Dennis Ross is an old hand in the region.

Mr. Spielberg has also shown the script to Mr. Ross's old boss, former President Bill Clinton. Mr. Clinton's aides said Mr. Spielberg reached out to him first more than a year ago and again as recently as Tuesday. Mr. Spielberg is also being advised by Mike McCurry, Mr. Clinton's White House spokesman, and Allan Mayer, a Hollywood spokesman who specializes in crisis communications.

Oh, for gosh sake, why? Must Clinton be involved with everything that leftist celebrities do?

In addition, there seems to be the recurring Hollywood theme of "the conflicted killers" motif:

I don't know how many of them actually had 'troubling doubts' about what they were doing," said Michael B. Oren, the historian and author of "Six Days of War." "It's become a stereotype, the guilt-ridden Mossad hit man. You never see guilt-ridden hit men in any other ethnicity. Somehow it's only the Jews. I don't see Dirty Harry feeling guilt-ridden. It's the flip side of the rationally motivated Palestinian terrorist: you can't have a Jew going to exact vengeance and not feel guilt-ridden about it, and you can't have a Palestinian who's operating out of pure evil - it's got to be the result of some trauma."

And Efraim Halevy, a veteran Mossad agent who headed the organization, Israel's intelligence agency, from 1998 to 2002, warned against reading too much into the misgivings of Israel's hit men.

"I know some of the people who were involved," he said. "Maybe people have doubts. If they have doubts, I think it's to their credit. It's not an easy thing to do. But it doesn't mean it's wrong. I'd be very happy to see the doubts on the other side, the fierce debates going on about whether they should or should not do it."

My impression of ruthless trained killers (SAS, Mossad assassins and such) is that they are pretty phlegmatic about it all. They know that they serve a cause. They are professionals who serve their national interest. They keep their emotions in check and do their jobs. That they have occasional doubts and emotions is very human, but does not detract from the necessity of their work. Hollywood loves the internally tortured souls who kill theme, but I think that most of these types in real life are well past that by the time they are participating in major operations.

In any case, I certainly would not wish to pre-judge a film before it is made, so I will have to wait.

This from Haaretz:

The Israel Defense Forces and police yesterday evacuated the residents of the Maoz Yam Hotel at the Neveh Dekalim settlement in the Gaza Strip, which has become an outpost of right-wing extremists during the past few months.

The raid began at noon, as the head of the IDF Southern Command signed an order declaring Gush Katif a closed military zone.

The IDF had declared the hotel a closed military zone Wednesday. Security forces did not encounter serious opposition from the approximately 150 people who were living in the hotel, who had gathered in the dining room and handcuffed themselves to each other.

This was clearly an emotionally difficult task for some of the officers:

"You're chicken; go with your heart," one of the youths called out to a soldier. "I'm a soldier, I have no choice," he responded.

One of the Border Policemen broke into tears during the evacuation and shouted, "I can't do this, this isn't my job." The youths encouraged him to refuse orders, but he recovered a few minutes later and continued evacuating the hotel residents.

First of all, this speaks very highly of the professionalism of the IDF personnel. I am sure some of them sympathize politically with the Israeli right-wing activists. But they did their job and carried out the orders of the legally elected government. Israel, after all, is a country of law and order.

Israel is tearing itself apart to make peace with the Palestinians. But peace will be possible only if the Palestinians reciprocate. When will we see Palestinian Authority security personnel drag "militants" out -- with tears flowing if that is what takes -- to serve the national interest of peace and reconciliation with Israel? Are Palestinians ready to tear themselves apart to make peace with Israel?

I don't see it yet. The PA leadership is still playing tactical games of "weakness" and attempting co-option of the "militants." At some point, however, the PA has to decide whether it and it alone speaks for the Palestinian people and negotiate with Israel in earnest without playing the good-cop-PA-and-bad-cop-Hamas routine.

Yomiuri Shimbun reports that Secretary of State Condi Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley will tour East Asia soon. The big topic? North Korea:

Rice's Asian trip will take place after the three-day Group of Eight summit meeting in Scotland that ends next Friday, when she will visit Thailand, China, Japan and South Korea, according to the official.

North Korea's nuclear program is likely to be high on the agenda throughout the trip, according to the official.

Rice and Stephen Hadley, national security adviser for U.S. President George W. Bush, are both scheduled to be briefed by South Korean Unification Minister Chun Dong Young, who arrived in the United States on Wednesday, about his recent meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

The Japanese government is clearly very cooperative about North Korea. China and South Korea remain, beneath a thin veneer of surface, hostile to the Bush administration agenda on North Korea. Clearly, the governments in these countries won't be convinced by reason and good words alone. Either the US has to offer a cake or it has to threaten a highly negative consequence for non-cooperation.

In China's case, I suspect there will be a cake offering as there are few realistic negative costs the US can exact at the moment. For South Korea, on the other hand, there may be some tough words. Again, the plot thickens.